1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method thereof in which an external apparatus that includes a second content group is connected to an information processing apparatus that includes a first content group.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional personal computers commonly refer to various types of content (still images, videos, music, documents, and so on) and display a list of reference information, such as representative images or titles of the content, in a specific order (a content list). Furthermore, by connecting a device or storage medium and executing an application program corresponding to that device or medium, personal computers are capable of creating lists of the content contained within the device or medium.
Some recent digital household electronic devices also have functions for creating lists of content held by all devices connected to a network within the household, which is implemented by the various devices connected to the household network communicating with one another. Such digital household electronic devices display lists of all the content, lists of only specific types of content, or lists of content processed according to a predetermined fixed rule, such as a list of content arranged in a specific order.
Meanwhile, there exists a technique for selecting content and determining the playback order thereof based on a user's preferences, the communication environment, and attribute information, such as the genre, of the content, receiving the content from a content server, and playing back the received content (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-84752, called “Patent Document 1” hereinafter).
However, a conventional content listing device such as that described above has the following problems.
First, when displaying only a list of the content within a connected device or a storage medium, a list of the content in other devices cannot be displayed. Therefore, a user must skip between multiple content lists, or perform another search across multiple devices, making the process complicated.
Furthermore, when displaying a list of content processed according to a predetermined fixed rule, there is the risk that the content present in a device that has been newly connected for the purpose of browsing its content will be obscured by other content.
Finally, according to the invention disclosed in Patent Document 1, the attribute information of content is used only as a means for evaluating the content during selection. Therefore, even when a new content group has been added, the method for controlling the overall content list is not determined by the attribute information of the content included in that new content group. For this reason, there is a problem that the newly-added content will not be displayed at all in the selection results.